Russia under Vladimir Putin
Since 1999, Vladimir Putin has continuously served as either president or Prime Minister of Russia. Putin has been described as the de facto leader of Russia since 2000.
During his presidency, he has been a member of the Unity party and the United Russia party. He is also affiliated with the People's Front, a group of supporters that Putin organized in 2011 to help improve the public's perception of United Russia. His political ideology, priorities and policies are sometimes referred to as Putinism.
Putin has enjoyed high domestic approval ratings throughout the majority of his presidency, with the exception of 2011–2013 which is likely due to the 2011–2013 Russian protests. In 2007, he was Time magazine's Person of the Year. In 2015, he was designated No. 1 in Time 100, Time magazine's list of the top 100 most influential people in the world. From 2013 to 2016, he was designated No. 1 on the Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People. As a result of economic reforms and a fivefold increase in the price of oil and gas, the Russian economy grew by an average of seven percent annually during Putin's first term as president. However, lower oil prices and sanctions for Russia's annexation of Crimea led to recession and stagnation in 2015 that has persisted into the present day. Political freedoms have been sharply curtailed, leading to widespread condemnation from human rights groups, as well as Putin being described as a dictator since his second presidency beginning in 2012.
Putinism
In an article published 11 January 2000 in Sovetskaya Rossiya, Russian political analyst Andrey Piontkovsky characterized Putinism as the highest and final stage of bandit capitalism in Russia, the stage where, as Vladimir Lenin said, the bourgeoisie throws the flag of democratic freedoms and human rights overboard; and also as a war, "consolidation" of the nation on the grounds of hatred against some ethnic group, attack on freedom of speech, information brainwashing, isolation from the outside world, and further economic degradation.The terms "Putinism" and "Putinist" often have negative connotations when used in Western media to reference the Russian government under Putin where, the military-security establishment, allegedly control much of the political and financial power. Many siloviki are Putin's personal friends or previously worked with him in state security and intelligence agencies, such as the, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the military.
Cassiday and Johnson argue that since taking power in 1999, "Putin has inspired expressions of adulation the likes of which Russia has not seen since the days of Joseph Stalin. Tributes to his achievements and personal attributes have flooded every possible media". Ross says the cult emerged quickly by 2002 and emphasizes Putin's "iron will, health, youth and decisiveness, tempered by popular support". Ross concludes: "The development of a Putin mini cult of personality was based on a formidable personality at its heart".
Acting president (1999–2000)
Putin's first campaign program
On 31 December 1999, President Boris Yeltsin resigned. Under the Constitution of Russia, the then prime minister of Russia Vladimir Putin became acting president.The day before, a program article signed by Putin, "Russia at the turn of the millennium", was published on the government web site. The potential head of state expressed his views on the past and problems of the country. The first task in Putin's view was consolidation of Russia's society: "The fruitful and creative work, which our country needs so badly, is impossible in a divided and internally atomised society". However, the author stressed: "There should be no forced civil accord in a democratic Russia. Social accord can only be voluntary".
The author stressed the importance of strengthening the state: "The key to Russia's recovery and growth today lies in the state-political sphere. Russia needs strong state power and must have it". Detailing his view, Putin emphasized: "Strong state power in Russia is a democratic, law-based, workable federal state".
Regarding the economic problems, Putin pointed out the need to significantly improve economic efficiency, the need to carry out a coherent and result-based social policy aimed at battling poverty, and the need to provide stable growth for people's well-being.
The article stated the importance of government support of science, education, culture, and health care since " country in which the people are not healthy physically and psychologically, are poorly educated and illiterate, will never rise to the peaks of world civilisation".
The article concluded with an alarmist statement that Russia was in the midst of one of the most difficult periods in its history: "For the first time in the past 200–300 years, it is facing the real threat of slipping down to the second, and possibly even third, rank of world states". To avoid that, he argued that there was a need for tremendous effort by all the intellectual, physical and moral forces of the nation because "verything depends on us, and us alone, on our ability to recognise the scale of the threat, to unite and apply ourselves to lengthy and hard work".
As stated in the history course by Russian Doctors of History Barsenkov and Vdovin, the basic ideas of the article were represented in the election platform of Vladimir Putin and supported by the majority of the country's citizens, leading to the victory of Vladimir Putin in the first round of the 2000 election, with 52 per cent of the votes cast.
First presidential term (2000–2004)
The outline of Russia's foreign policy was presented by Vladimir Putin in his Address to Russia's Federal Assembly in April 2002: "We are building constructive, normal relations with all the world's nations—I want to emphasise, with all the world's nations. However, I want to note something else: the norm in the international community, in the world today, is also harsh competition—for markets, for investment, for political and economic influence. And in this fight, Russia needs to be strong and competitive". "I want to stress that Russian foreign policy will in the future be organized in a strictly pragmatic way, based on our capabilities and national interests: military and strategic, economic and political. And also taking into account the interests of our partners, above all in the CIS".In his 2008 book, the Russian political commentator, retired KGB lieutenant-general Nikolai Leonov, noted that Putin's program article was barely noticed then and never revisited later—a fact that Leonov regretted, because "its content is most important for contrasting against his subsequent actions" and thus figuring out Putin's pattern, under which "words, more often than not, do not match his actions".
Restoring functionality of government
The concept of "Putinism" was described in a positive sense by Russian political scientist Andranik Migranyan. According to Migranyan, Putin came into office when the worst regime was established: the economy was "totally decentralized" and "the state had lost central authority while the oligarchs robbed the country and controlled its power institutions". In two years, Putin restored the hierarchy of power, ending the omnipotence of regional elites as well as destroying political influence of "oligarchs and oligopolies in the federal center". The Boris Yeltsin-era non-institutional center of power commonly called "The Family" was ruined, which according to Migranyan in turn undercut the positions of the actors such as Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, who had sought to privatize the Russian state "with all of its resources and institutions".Migranyan said that Putin began establishing common rules of the game for all actors, starting with an attempt to restore the role of the government as the institution expressing the combined interests of the citizens and "capable of controlling the state's financial, administrative and media resources". According to Migranyan: "Naturally, in line with Russian traditions, any attempt to increase the state's role causes an intense repulsion on the part of the liberal intellectuals, not to mention a segment of the business community that is not interested in the strengthening of state power until all of the most attractive state property has been seized". Migranyan claimed that oligopolies' view of democracy was set on a premise of whether they were close to the center of power, rather than "objective characteristics and estimates of the situation in the country". Migranyan said "free" media, owned by e.g. Berezovsky and Gusinsky, were nothing similar to free media as understood by the West, but served their own economic and political interests while "all other politicians and analysts were denied the right to go on the air".
Migranyan sees enhancement of the role of the law enforcement agencies as a trial to set barriers against criminals, "particularly those in big business".
Migranyan sees in 2004 fruition of the social revolution initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev, whose aims were to rebuild the social system, saying that "the absolute dominance of private ownership in Russia, recognized by all political forces today, has been the greatest achievement and result of this social revolution".
According to Migranyan, the major trouble of Russian democracy is the inability of its civil society to rule the state, and underdevelopment of public interests. He sees that as the consequence of the Yeltsin era's family-ruled state being unable to pursue "a favorable environment for mid-sized and small businesses". Migranyan sees modern Russia as a democracy, at least formally, while "the state, having restored its effectiveness and control over its own resources, has become the largest corporation responsible for establishing the rules of the game". Migranyan wonders how much this influence might extend into the future. In 2004, he saw two possibilities for the Putin regime: either transformation into a consolidated democracy, or bureaucratic authoritarianism. However, "if Russia is lagging behind the developed capitalist nations in regard to the consolidation of democracy, it is not the quality of democracy, but rather its amount and the balance between civil society and the state".